Now playing at a denomination near you

  • The Complete Guide To Christian DenominationsGreg picked up this book for me called “The Com­plete Guide to Chris­t­ian Denom­i­na­tions” on a whim, and I’ve been mak­ing my way through it. I must be almost as much of the church-lady/church-junkie that Greg makes me out to be, because I’ve found it hard to put down sometimes.

    I think I’m a lit­tle unusual for an Ortho­dox con­vert in that I didn’t start out with a Protes­tant upbring­ing. My spir­i­tual life could be sum­ma­rized as:

    1. Phase 1 – 0–8 years – “Huh? Jesus? Heaven? Satan? What?”
    2. Phase 2 – 9–15 years – “Phooey. Noth­ing is there and peo­ple who say oth­er­wise are just being weird.”
    3. Phase 3 – 16–17 years – “I think I’ll believe in God and read the Bible a lot, just for kicks.”
    4. Phase 4 – 17–20 years – “Hello there! I was born again at a David Wilk­er­son Cru­sade. I don’t believe in reli­gion; I just believe in lov­ing the Lord. Want to sing the first 70 verses of ‘Michael, Row the Boat Ashore’ with me? Hey, come back!”
    5. Phase 5 – 21 to present – “The Ortho­dox Church is neat, neat, neat. Thank good­ness it kept me from mess­ing up too bad.”


    So nat­u­rally, I don’t have much of a sense of what makes a Bap­tist church dif­fer­ent from an Church of Christ church, let alone the arcane stuff like what makes an Amer­i­can Bap­tist Asso­ci­a­tion church dif­fer­ent from a North Amer­i­can Bap­tist Con­fer­ence church (dif­fer­ent from an Amer­i­can Bap­tist Churches in the USA church dif­fer­ent from a Gen­eral Asso­ci­a­tion of Gen­eral Bap­tist Churches church dif­fer­ent from ….)

    Since my for­ma­tive impres­sions of ecu­menism are all Ortho­dox, I’m find­ing it fas­ci­nat­ing to see what split churches apart and formed new ones.

    (And before I go any fur­ther, I’ll men­tion that I’m not on my way to mak­ing a tri­umphal­is­tic point that the Ortho­dox Church is neat, neat, neat. I think the Ortho­dox Church in Amer­ica owes an enor­mous debt to the zeal of Protes­tant Chris­tians that kept the faith burn­ing bright for cen­turies while the Ancient Church was shak­ing off the tox­i­c­ity of Mus­lim oppres­sion and inter­nal cor­rup­tion. But that’s another blog entry …)

    The book is orga­nized into broad cat­e­gories that are in alpha­bet­i­cal order, with Catholic and Ortho­dox on the list along with Methodist and Men­non­ite. (Which makes us Old Guys just other denom­i­na­tions, which doesn’t seem accu­rate. But what are you gonna do with these kids these days?) So I’m just mak­ing my way through, and what emerges after a while is a pic­ture of some of the move­ments, con­tro­ver­sies, trends and rifts that peri­od­i­cally built up and then let loose. For those who started out in a Protes­tant church — or who are just plain bet­ter schol­ars than I am, which isn’t hard — it may sound funny that I was so unaware of this recent Chris­t­ian history.

    For each of these 17 cat­e­gories, the author gives a brief his­tory and overview, then goes on to list the sub-groups inside that cat­e­gory — all the dif­fer­ent denom­i­na­tions within Con­gre­ga­tional, for exam­ple, as well as all the dio­ce­ses within Ortho­dox — and then lays out their beliefs on God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible and so on.

    It’s amaz­ing how sim­i­lar all of the major beliefs are, and equally amaz­ing how sim­i­lar they are within dif­fer­ent sub-groups of the same denomination.

    For instance, I had no idea that there were so many Protes­tant con­vic­tions (some­times lead­ing to sep­a­ra­tions) that hap­pened over how the church was going to be gov­erned or how bap­tisms were done. But it’s even more sur­pris­ing to have church splits that occurred over the “mil­len­nium” — that 1000-year reign of Christ on earth that’s referred to in Rev­e­la­tion 20:1–6.

    I remem­ber read­ing a foot­note in the Ortho­dox Study Bible that there are pre­mil­len­nial, post­mil­lenial and amil­len­nial churches. (I won’t even try to explain them, but you can read about it here on Wikipedia.) I don’t think I quite believed it, to be hon­est. Why would a body of believ­ers let guess­work about the future pose a major imped­i­ment to their communion?

    Maybe after all these dif­fer­ences in escha­tol­ogy and church admin­is­tra­tion trans­late into dif­fer­ences in how life goes on and how peo­ple behave that are too nuanced to make it into anyone’s book. Or maybe they seemed incred­i­bly impor­tant at the time. Or maybe dis­agree­ing over whether the church owned its own prop­erty or whether bap­tisms would be by sprin­kling or immer­sion was just a handy excuse for part­ing com­pany when dif­fer­ences had become ubiq­ui­tous and indefinable.

    On a tape of com­par­a­tive reli­gions that I lis­tened to, the lec­turer men­tioned that Protes­tant churches have been at a his­tor­i­cal dis­ad­van­tage to weather the nor­mal amount of fric­tion that exists in Chris­t­ian churches, inso­far as they don’t have a monas­tic tra­di­tion that allows those who are more zeal­ous, more schol­arly or who just plain care more to fol­low up in a com­mu­nity that is both in the church and apart from it. I think that is true, but it’s just the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the dif­fer­ent sense we have of what it means to be a Chris­t­ian. What lit­tle expe­ri­ence I did have with Protes­tantism made me anx­ious by their asser­tion that as a spir­i­tual new­born, I was ready to turn around and just start wit­ness­ing, express­ing opin­ions and bring­ing peo­ple to Christ. I found it all very trou­bling. Bring peo­ple to Christ? Good grief, who was going to bring me?

    I gather that it’s one of the dilem­mas some Protes­tants have when they approach Ortho­doxy (and prob­a­bly Catholi­cism as well), but in my case, I was greatly relieved that the Ortho­dox Church told me that I wasn’t there yet, that I hadn’t arrived, but that I had started my pil­grim­age. The pur­suit of god­li­ness could rightly be expected to take me … oh, the next mil­len­nium or the next infin­ity. Not really sure. Doesn’t mat­ter. Pick up the Bible. Lis­ten to a tape. Read an icon. Say a prayer. Start the jour­ney. Con­tinue the jour­ney.

    We just don’t have that in com­mon with Protes­tants. In my expe­ri­ence, the bumper sticker sen­ti­ments of “God’s not fin­ished with me yet” are vastly out­num­bered by the kind that imply absolute assur­ance and eschew our belief in grad­ual theo­sis. We scan­dal­ize them with it, but then they scan­dal­ize us with their sectarianism.

    I leave it to apol­o­gists to say exactly what the Body of Christ con­sists of — it’s too divi­sive a sub­ject for a know-nothing like me. I like to think that there will be more to it than I could ever imag­ine, that some dif­fer­ences that seemed insur­mount­able this side of glory will just mean that we have dif­fer­ent ways to love God when we see Him face to face.

    The impor­tant thing just seems to make sure that as many of us as pos­si­ble get that far. We pray for the unity of Christ’s Church — we know that we are diverse, and being fallen, we know that means we’re widely spread out from each other and unable to see things in a uni­fied way. But maybe we’re more alike than we know.

    Any­way, I’d like to think so.


    Related posts:

    1. Cra­dle and con­vert Orthodox
    2. No room at the inn. Or the megachurch.
    3. Begin­ning to Pray by Anthony Bloom
    4. The peo­ple speak to “DaVinci”
    5. The scary Mary prayer

    June 4th, 2006 | Grace | 6 Comments |

6 Responses and Counting...

  • Karl Thienes 06.04.2006

    My mom (non-Orthodox, but sym­pa­thtic) was read­ing this book and found it fas­ci­nat­ing too.…

  • Grace

    Excel­lent! Always glad to find out I’m not a lone fanatic. I won­der if it’s the first time any­one has done some­thing like this.

    I was given a book of church his­tory writ­ten mostly by Protes­tants and I thought I was going to lose my mind hear­ing how much opin­ion they passed off as fact (“the cult of Mary” “the cult of saints”). But I kept it around because I fig­ured if I could ever get past my irri­ta­tion, it ought to at least have some fac­tual info about how all the Prot churches devel­oped and split.

    This book is a much eas­ier reference.

  • Greg

    {spousal tri­umphal­ism} You know, I don’t take many bows, but I am real­l­l­lly pleased you liked the book this much. {/triumphalism}

  • Mimi

    I love read­ing that book at the book­store, I wan­der by it now and then.

    I’m like you, I don’t have a Protes­tant background.

  • Grace

    Uh oh, another drive-by reader. Barnes & Noble doesn’t really want to know how glad I am they put soft chairs and a cof­fee shop in the stores so I can treat them as a library. Still, I buy the books some­times, so I sup­pose it all works out.

  • Mimi

    I think so too, Grace.

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